A wife, mother, runner, teacher & writer, I have to hit the ground running.

read a book to stay awake

About this blog

By Emily Dickey

I am a 30-something Waynesboro native. My husband Chip and I have been married for 13 years and are the parents of Nora (9) and Eve (5). I am a high school English teacher, who dreams of one day having my books published. An avid runner, I have
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I am a 30-something Waynesboro native. My husband Chip and I have been married for 13 years and are the parents of Nora (9) and Eve (5). I am a high school English teacher, who dreams of one day having my books published. An avid runner, I have medals from four marathons and five half-marathons hanging from my mirror for inspiration to continue hitting the pavement.

You know, one that I spend the whole day thinking about the characters, wondering what’s going to happen next. One that I choose to pick up instead of the remote. One that will keep me up all hours of the night, wanting more. One that I find myself eager to finish but sad to end.

Unfortunately, I just can’t find one that strikes my fancy. I’ve checked out the New York Times Bestseller List, headed to Amazon, asked friends, Googled authors, read book jackets and wondered aimlessly through the library. I just can’t seem to find one that I want to invest my time in.

I’ve always been a reader. I remember swapping books with my childhood friend, Ann Rotz, in elementary school – The Babysitter’s Club, Christopher Pike, even Sweet Valley High (despite the fact that it was so painfully superficial). Majoring in English at a liberal arts school provided me further reading opportunities with more mature writers – William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald - you know, the “classics”. Now it’s my job to inspire high school students to read…well, not only to read now, but to become lifelong readers.

It never ceases to amaze me when someone says they think reading is “stupid.” I’m not just talking about teens; I’m talking about many people beyond elementary school. Most of us can’t remember a time when we couldn’t read. When we looked at words and had no idea what they said. We relied on pictures and our parents to decode the world around us.

Like many parents, Chip and I have read to Nora and Eve since they were wee babes, hoping to instill a love of reading, or, at the very least, make them smarter. As our girls have grown, we’ve kept bedtime stories as a staple to our nightly routine. It’s been pretty incredible to watch our girls learn the alphabet, recognize words and, for Nora at least, learn how to read. Both girls gravitate to the stories that those books envelope, eager to open the doors to other worlds.

What changes for us? How can we be so eager to read when we’re younger and then so adamantly rebut it as we get older? Why does reading get a bad rap for not being “cool”? Or is reading for pleasure the first thing to go when our schedules are overflowing with other obligations?

It’s no question – reading takes work. It’s not always easy, even when we are reading for enjoyment. We have other distractions that take away our attention, such as sleepless nights, long workdays, household chores and other commitments. It’s much easier to pick up the remote and zone out at the end of the evening. But the work that reading entails is not without benefits. Reading makes us better writers, more informed citizens and, overall, more interesting people.

If that doesn’t make you want to pick up a book - think about this: people such as Bill Gates, Mark Zukerberg and Oprah Winfrey have a net worth of $65 billion, $14.1 billion and $2.7 billion respectively. Do you think these people read on a regular basis?